Instead, lining up to shake hands, even after the most physical and emotional defeats, is treated as a must in Illinois high school basketball circles.

“The handshake line is important to recognize the other team for playing hard,” Hononegah forward Ryan Sughroue said Wednesday after a season-ending loss to Auburn in the Class 4A Boylan Regional. “Sometimes, it gets out of hand, but it’s definitely an important part of the game to help build character.”

It got out of hand Tuesday, when a fight that is now being reviewed by the IHSA started in the handshake line after Jefferson beat East on a buzzer-beating shot. Jefferson coach Todd Brannan said after the game that he almost took his team straight to the locker room, but wanted to show respect toward East for a hard-played game. In the future, he said, he might skip the tradition after particularly emotional endings.

Five months ago, citing 24 “incidents” that erupted in handshake lines in various sports in the last three years, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association directed its teams to discontinue the handshake line unless both schools take responsibility to police it themselves.

Local players say a heated game is no reason to skip a civil handshake afterward.

“Emotions run high in regionals, when you lose one and you are done,” Auburn star Antoine Pittman said, “but you can’t act like that after you lose.”

But it’s not just about how big the game was. Or how emotional.

“It’s how the game was coached, how the game was officiated and how the game ended,” Freeport coach Danny Turner said.

Coaches pulled their teams off the floor without a handshake after at least two NIC-10 games this year, and both times it was all about the ending, an ending that resembled the East-Jefferson game with fans rushing the court in celebration.

Freeport’s Pretzels fled to a classroom after losing at Guilford on a buzzer-beater from the top of the key.

“Fans stormed the court and ran down our bench in the excitement and toppled one of our players,” Turner said. “I immediately got my kids out as fast as possible.

“As we were leaving the gym, a Guilford coach said, ‘Do you want our guys to shake your hand?’ Are you kidding me? There is no need for that. After you go through a situation like that, you can’t shake hands.”

Page 2 of 2 - When Hononegah pulled the season’s first big NIC-10 upset with a win at Boylan, Hononegah students ran onto the court and Boylan players left. Some Hononegah fans later complained the Titans were poor sports, but they were simply being prudent.

“The only time I have ever taken kids off the floor and skipped the handshake line is when kids are rushing the floor,” Boylan coach Mike Winters said. “Hononegah beat us fair and square, but I didn’t want any kids to get hurt. You can anticipate a lot of bad situations when fans come out of the stands. They could say something to your kids, and then they lose it.”

No one, though, seems to want to dump the handshake line.

“There is no need for an overreaction,” Winters said. “There are so many good things associated with it.”

“It’s part of learning to do something,” Guilford coach Dean Martinetti said, “that you don’t always want to do. It’s about respect.”

That’s true. But skipping the ritual in certain circumstances is NOT a sign of disrespect.

“Depending on how the game ended,” Freeport’s Turner said, “sometimes it doesn’t call for a hand shake. And that’s not to say the kids aren’t being sportsmanlike.”